Fact and Fiction

The Outsiders

It’s been more than fifty years since I was setting at the Colonial Inn bar in downtown Charleston, South Carolina drinking beer. With no warning all hell broke loose. With Charleston being home to folks serving in the Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines, and Coast Guard, chaos was rather common place.

A man’s wife had walked into the bar and found her husband dancing with his new girlfriend, so I later heard. In sudden rage the wife attacked the girlfriend. The battle was on. In moments they had ripped each other’s clothes off, leaving them clad only in drawers and bras. The bartender mounted the bar and was jumping up and down shouting words of encouragement

Directly, I heard the siren. The air police, or somebody with authority were en route and approaching rapidly. I waited and watched as long as I dared, then I stepped out and watched from the sidewalk. I had exited none too soon, because they were already piling out of their car, night sticks in hand. It was time to be elsewhere, so I moved down the street taking my beer with me.

I didn’t hear the final outcome. The only ones who knew were those sharing space in the guardhouse.